So that's why the British go there

Dubai hotel issues etiquette guide after sex on the beach scandal -Times Online

Dubai has been attracting a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons lately, and given that the weather is hellishly hot for most the year, and it appears to have no significant natural beauty (sand desert holds no interest for me at least), I am curious as to why people go there.

The above article may explain one reason:

Brunches take place across Dubai every Friday, the first day of the Dubai weekend, and are heavily promoted in Dubai's Time Out and enjoyed to the full by expatriates.

The lavish affairs last from late morning into the early evening when diners can enjoy unlimited food and alcohol for a fixed entry fee.

In the case of the Madinat Jumeirah the charge is £88, which includes bottomless champagne, cocktails and wine between 12:30pm and 4:30pm.

I like one of the comments that follow the story:

Oh dear, - I've been, I've seen and I won't be going back. A nauseating mix of Las Vegas and the 12th Century...

A day late

Truth and the casualties of war - Gerard Henderson - Opinion - smh.com.au

I meant to post this yesterday, but Gerard Henderson's column about the swings in the perception of Australia's role in WW1 seemed pretty good.

He referred to the Four Corners program on Monday evening, most of which I saw. One simple thing I noticed about it was that the historical black and white film looked unusually clear and sharp to my eye: perhaps it had been cleaned up recently with some software?

There was one historian who made comments that I did not agree with, but most of the comments in the show seemed fair enough.

There is so much complexity, ambiguity and revision about World War 1 that it is a topic I have always been reluctant to delve into too deeply. At least things got much, much clearer by the time of World War 2, and having parents involved in that makes it much more directly of interest.

Wind and the grid

If You Love Wind (and Solar)… - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

Here's another post about the problems that the current highly variable output from renewable energy can cause the electricity grid.

The parasite of love

Dopamine is key to a parasite’s ability to unite rat and cat, researcher says

Regular readers may well recall that it's been know for some time that rats infected with toxoplasma gondii lose their fear of the smell of cat urine.

What appears new to the story, however, is that the smell of cats not only doesn't worry them, it:

...also makes them mentally and sexually aroused each time their tiny pink noses detect cat smells. ...

"What this damn parasite knows how to do is make cat urine smell sexy to male rats," Sapolsky said. After being exposed in laboratory tests to different cat scents, infected male rats showed a spike in testosterone levels and their testes became engorged.

Not only that, but female rats find infected male rats pretty sexy too:

....female rats also responded to the change in hormone levels by showing preference toward infected males approximately 95 percent of the time, Sapolsky said, which came as another interesting find.

"One of the rules of evolutionary biology is if you're an animal, you don't want to mate with anyone full of parasites," Sapolsky said. "Somehow that doesn't happen with T. gondii infection."

Well then, maybe we are lucky that toxoplasma gondii didn't work out how to make the evolutionary proto-human males of Africa sexually aroused by lions.

(I can see the basis for some good science fiction in this story too.)

The Doctor Fizzles

I was away when the last episode of the last series of Dr Who screened here, and I finally saw it on tape last night.

I know from LP that it attracted criticism for the perceived anti-feminist way it treated Donna, but really, that was the least of its problems.

The last two episodes were pretty much a complete mess. Russell T Davies had really hit some sort of creative block, I reckon, in trying to wrap it all up. Here are my complaints:

1. it took the usual deus ex machina feature of the show to pretty ridiculous heights. Having a fake regeneration as a link between the last two episodes was a paticularly cynical trick, in my books.

2. the special effects (the 27 planets, the thousands of Daleks) all looked unusually cheesy. (Computer generated effects which mulitply anything too much - be it soldiers, ships, spaceships - just automatically look too fake to my eye.)

3. Rose still had the distracting bizarre thing where she couldn't seem to remember exactly how she used to speak. Her upper and lower teeth at times just seemed weirdly misaligned (or something) in her mouth. I find this all very odd.

4. All of the initial crying and carry on by the Doctor's pals when they saw it was the Daleks who had moved the earth seemed out of character defeatism.

5. The blaring music, which I have noted before is often what sells the excitement in the show, was really so continuous this time that it was annoying.

6. Bringing all the Davies created characters together was a nice idea, but it still did not allow enough time for each of them to impress. The sudden appearance of K9 seemed especially stuck on in a "tick the box" kind of manner.

7. Both Donna and Rose were just getting a bit too soppy about their relationship with the Doctor, if you ask me. For characters that are nearly killed in every episode, can't they take a bit more comfort in a return home and the occasional visit from the Doctor for a cup of tea?

There are probably more points, but that's all I can recall for now.

Uh huh

Steven Weber: Now We Must

Huffington Post is, of course, chock-a-block with excitement over the dawning of New Era of the Obama Messiah-dom. Seemingly, this is a new step in the evolution of humankind, or something:

...Obama will automatically be a good president not because he's the first black man to be elected or because he's a Democrat but because he is an actual, evolved, progressive, intelligent American.

As opposed to that monkey George W, I suppose.

As for Obama's talents:

Along with showcasing his brilliance as a student of history and law, his ability to manage and delegate, his mass appeal and preternatural communicative abilities, his election means that---finally---a national dialogue will begin in earnest. The conversation will be national therapy, with all of the demons bubbling to the surface. And along with racial stereotypes being torn down like dilapidated crack houses, Liberals and Conservatives are being redefined, maps redrawn, hopes fulfilled.

"The Messiah-doctor will see you now, America."

At least one Huffington reader thinks this might be going a little over the top:

I find the messianic undertones or your article a little disturbing.

Huge waste of effort

Canberra calls net filter trial | Australian IT

From the Journal of Pointless Experiments

The challenges of eating right on a limited budget - International Herald Tribune:

The World Bank says nearly a billion people around the world live on a dollar a day, or even less; in the United States, the daily food-stamp allowance is typically just a few dollars per person, while the average American eats $7 worth of food per day...

This fall a couple in Encinitas, California, conducted their own experiment to find out what it was like to live for a month on just a dollar a day for food. Overnight, their diets changed significantly.

You don't say. What type of person would think such an experiment makes sense?:

...the couple - Christopher Greenslate, 28, and Kerri Leonard, 29, both high school social studies teachers - bought raw beans, rice, cornmeal and oatmeal in bulk, and made their own bread and tortillas. Fresh fruits and vegetables weren't an option.

Um, no doubt a dollar a day is not a lot of money for anyone in the world. But do a couple of social studies teachers really need to be told that $1 might buy you more in, say, Africa than it will in California? (Or, for that matter, that many of the poor do grow at least some of their own food.)

Who's Obama going to talk to?

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Where now for Palestinian unity?:

The emnity between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah seems yet further entrenched, after Cairo-brokered reconciliation talks between the two groups broke down before they had even officially begun.

The Palestinian national dialogue, due to be held on Monday in the Egyptian capital, was to have been attended by all the major Palestinian political factions....

Hassan Essa, an Egyptian political analyst, academic and former director of the Israeli department within the ministry of foreign affairs, says the chances of ever brokering a settlement between the two sides are slim.

"The amount of mistrust between Hamas and Fatah is enormous. Hamas has ties with Iran, this is no secret, which makes Hamas not free to take the Palestinian decisions - because Iran is playing with the Palestinian cause."

Over to you Obama: good luck, you'll be needing it.

Good news

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Movie Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes

Madagascar 2 appears to have satisfied most critics, with some giving it the rare compliment (for a sequel) of saying it is better than the first.

The clips look quite good, and I would see it with or without children.

The fight over birthdays

Don't let them eat cake, Saudi cleric says - Los Angeles Times

Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric recently denounced birthday parties as an unwanted foreign influence, but another prominent cleric declared they were OK.

I assume, then, that gay marriage might not be coming to Islam any time soon.

Yeah, this'll help

Schwarzenegger tells backers of gay marriage: Don't give up

Today, Schwarzenegger urged backers of gay marriage to follow the lesson he learned as a bodybuilder trying to lift weights that were too heavy for him at first. "I learned that you should never ever give up. . . . They should never give up. They should be on it and on it until they get it done."

The governor's comments came as protesters took to the streets for a fifth day in a row, sometimes marching to Catholic and Mormon churches that supported passage of the ballot measure with public pronouncements and campaign donations.

Bully tactics seem hardly likely to encourage the conservative acceptance of gay marriage that these activists want to see.

The argument which they want to promote in their legal challenge is that "votes can't take away rights." But surely any argument along those lines only encourages the "slippery slope" counterargument that polygamists will argue they have a right to marry too. If anything, the polygamists have a much, much stronger historical and anthropological grounds to argue that polygamy is a "right" deserving of legal recognition in all nations, not just some. If you are a gay person who argues that polygamists do not have a right to a marriage licence, what is it about the idea of gay couples that gives them a "better" right?

The truth is, of course, that it is not a matter of "rights" at all.

As for the argument that preventing gays from marrying is the same as legislating against inter-racial marriage, the best answer to that I have seen was in the First Things blog:

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries state legislatures and courts in the South were prepared to deconstruct and redefine marriage in order to achieve racist goals. For them, race was everything. Similarly, the Supreme Courts of Hawaii and Alaska were also prepared to deconstruct and redefine marriage to advance their vision of social transformation. In Hawaii, the Supreme Court explicitly declared that the State “created” the institution of marriage and thus could redefine it to include persons of the same sex. For them, the only two players in civil society are autonomous, freely-contracting individuals and the state.

Just as the racists tried to redefine marriage for their purposes, thereby distorting its genuine meaning, the Alaskan and Hawaiian courts tried to do the same thing. In both cases the state attempted to redefine marriage to achieve its ideal of an improved society. Both were unjustly tampering with the most crucial pre-political society of all–the unique community of marriage, based upon the union of the two sexes.

Good point, I reckon. I still remain amazed at how quickly the idea of gay marriage has caught on in the liberal West.

Boys and bad PR

Adoptive parents believe boys are 'too much trouble' - The Independent

In England:

Boys wait twice as long for families in some parts of the country, as agencies struggle to challenge negative attitudes among parents, according to research by the British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF).

Black boys in particular take time to be adopted. One agency complains, though, that social workers are too conservative in trying to stick to middle class, married couples:

"...we have to work harder to get some social workers to see what a single person or a same-sex couple can offer a child."

It would be an odd consequence of the attitudes of white married couples if it meant more black kids end up in gay households.

Catholics went for Obama

Religious voters helped Obama to victory - Los Angeles Times

The Catholic vote went 54% to Obama.

Maybe some of that was due to the Hispanic vote going heavily for him, on the grounds of a friendlier immigration policy?

But looking closer at the figures, it is perhaps not as rebellious as it seems:

While Obama won the Catholic vote overall 54% - 45%, among Catholics who attend mass every week, McCain won 55% - 43%. Clearly the main reason Obama succeeded overall was the fact that Catholic voters echoed the concerns of the rest of the electorate in citing the economy as their top issue..

A bit of history missed

Memorial service held for widow of 'Japan's Schindler'

I don't recall hearing about "Japan's Schindler", Chiune Sugihara, before:

Spielberg has praised Chiune as ‘‘Japan’s Schindler,’’ comparing his deeds to those of Oskar Schindler, the German factory owner in Poland who provided Jews with safe haven during World War II and was depicted in Spielberg’s film, ‘‘Schindler’s List.’’ Chiune, who was the consul general in the then Lithuanian capital of Kaunas from 1938 to 1940, is known for rescuing 6,000 Jews from the Holocaust.

Chiune repeatedly sought permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry to issue visas for the fleeing Jews. But his request was turned down. He then issued them with transit visas on his own initiative. Records show that the recipients traveled via Siberia and Japan to eventual safety in the United States and other destinations.

There is a lengthy Wikipedia post about him. Interesting story. (Although Sugihara acted against his instructions from Japan, I didn't realise the Japanese government generally resisted the urging from Germany to take action against any Jews under its control.)

Thanks for your great sense of timing, guys

Recycle sewage 'as a last resort' | The Australian

I don't get this. I don't know exactly when the Queensland government started working on its sewage recycling plan for Brisbane water, but it certainly got a lot of attention when the water levels in the dams got well below 20% (Wivenhoe got to 15%,) and people were losing well established plants and trees in their yards from the dry. No one could say with certainty at what level the remaining dam water might be too hard to treat. There was some speculation that maybe at around 5%, the dams would be effectively empty anyway.

With that situation, I think most people accepted the government reassurances that it was a safe process, and took the use of such water in Singapore as an example of its safety.

Now the dams are up to 40%, and if we have a relatively "normal" summer, that level could well increase over the next few months. But the government still wants to kick start the system and start pumping treated water into Wivenhoe dam in February.

As this was always the plan, (unless dams had got to 100%, I suppose), why is it only now that various scientist types are starting to say that it may not be a good idea after all? And we are hearing that the Singapore experience is not really similar: most of its recycled water goes into industrial use, apparently.

The only obvious reason to start pumping the water into Wivenhoe in February is likely to be so the government can avoid an accusation that it has wasted money on a facility that was not needed. But can't the treated water now be scaled down and somehow diverted into industrial use until we really do need it to ensure a drinking supply?

This is going to be a hot issue for sometime yet, one suspects.

Saturday night cooking

Here at Opinion Dominion's dominion, it's often your writer's duty to do the Saturday night cooking. I used to usually succeed at this, but for some or other, efforts this year have not been as successful as in the past. The attempt at chicken gumbo was particularly unfortunate, but I blame the recipe book.

Anyhow, last night's effort was a new recipe that turned out pretty successful, although next time we will try a bit less chorizo, and more scallops and basil. The recipe itself is from this week's Brisbane News: (not sure if that link will last more than a week, though):

Olive oil
2 red onions, diced
1 red capsicum, diced
2 chorizo sausages, sliced into 1cm rounds
½tsp sweet paprika
4 garlic cloves, crushed
30ml red wine vinegar
1tbs brown sugar
Salt & pepper
4 basil leaves, shredded
8 scallops, roe off

Heat a splash of olive oil in a medium-sized pan. Saute onion and capsicum over a gentle heat until soft but not browned. add chorizo, paprika and garlic. Saute until chorizo is just cooked. add vinegar and sugar. Reduce heat and simmer until the sauce starts to caramelise. Season with salt and pepper and then toss through the basil. Set aside. Grill or pan-fry scallops for 2 mins on each side. Fold through capsicum sauce and serve. Serves 2.

Brisbane News has always been a very high quality free weekly, particularly in its food sections. Its website has a lot of great recipes from past editions on line.

By the way, last night's wine: Deakin Estate 2008 Sauvignon Blanc: an excellent example of why there is not often a need to spent more than $10 for a bottle of wine in Australia.

Smell the money

Dubai's beaches face a stinking problem :

For several weeks some of the emirate's fabled beaches have been covered with the stinking contents of septic tanks as Dubai suffers the consequences of its frantic and poorly controlled development.

The foul effluent, which threatens to damage Dubai's image, highlights one of the paradoxes of the emirates -- it can build the world's tallest tower and six-star hotels but has not constructed the sewage works it needs....

...the city still has no main drainage system, hence the need for tankers to collect the contents of septic tanks and transport the waste to the emirate's only sewage treatment works at Al-Awir, out in open desert.

The problem is that the tanker drivers have to wait for hours in the heat to get into the sewage works, hence the temptation to dump it into the sea, or just in the middle of the desert.

Oddly, Dubai is not the only rich Arab city that lags in investing in decent waste disposal:

The Jeddah Municipality has signed three contracts worth SR95 million on Saturday with specialized companies to clean up the “Musk Lake,” an open, seeping body of raw sewage east of Jeddah, according to Ibraheem Kutubkhana, deputy mayor for constructions and projects....

More than 800 tanker trucks dump raw sewage into the lake daily. Most of Jeddah’s sewage is handled by on-site septic systems that require fleets of trucks to periodically empty.

The city also dumps untreated sewage directly into the Red Sea because the infrastructure is inadequate to handle the amount of waste produced by residents.

"Musk Lake" might be an open cesspit, but it looks like a fairly pretty one. The reason for some urgency in cleaning up it might have something to do with this:

...a breach in the sand dam, which is blocking the lake, that could lead to massive flooding in the eastern parts of the city.

The Bride of the Red Sea wants to avoid getting her feet wet.

China slowdown

Chinese economy shows signs of fizzling - International Herald Tribune

According to the article:

Economists expect the economy to expand at an annualized rate of as little as 5.8 percent in the fourth quarter this year, down from nearly 11.2 percent in 2007.

Analysts worry that a sharp downturn could undermine the already weakening investment climate and impair some of China's biggest banks, which have bankrolled much of the boom. The Chinese government is said to worry that if economic growth slows to 8 percent or less, not enough jobs will be created in a country that is rapidly urbanizing, and that could lead to social unrest.

Not auguring well

The five most infamous Rahm Emanuel moments | FP Passport

Foreign Policy provides a list of notorious Rahm Emanuel stories, none of them terribly encouraging for people who thought that Obama was planning on doing politics differently.

Even worse, though, is the suggestion that John Kerry may end up as Secretary of State (!)

UPDATE: Slate has a handy guide as to who Obama should not select for his cabinet, and they agree with me about Kerry:

The 2004 election demonstrated that nobody likes him. That isn't disqualifying for a senator, but it is for a diplomat.

UPDATE 2: I see that Fred Barnes on Fox said on the weekend that he initially thought Emanuel's appointment was bad, but he has since changed his mind. Obviously, as I take most of my political cues from Fox, I may have to change my mind too!